The Lackawanna Cut-Off Restoration Project is a New Jersey Transit and Amtrak effort to restore passenger service to the Lackawanna Cut-Off in northwest New Jersey.
Phase 1 of the project, launched in 2011, is slated to extend NJ Transit's commuter rail service from Port Morris Junction in Morris County to Andover in Sussex County, bringing passenger trains to Andover for the first time in more than half a century. Service to Penn Station will require electro-diesel locomotives (such as NJ Transit's Bombardier ALP-45DP locomotives) because the North River Tunnels cannot accommodate diesel engines.
Initial steps have been taken in other phases of the project, which aim to rebuild the remainder of the Cut-Off to Northeastern Pennsylvania and relaunch train service between New York City and Scranton. In 2020, Amtrak included the route in its 15-year expansion vision. In December 2023, the Federal Railroad Administration accepted the route into its Corridor Identification and Development Program, which allocates money for planning and prioritizes the project for future funding.
Operations (1908–79)
Built between 1908 and 1911 by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad (DL&W) to speed service between Hoboken, New Jersey, and Buffalo, New York, the Lackawanna Cut-Off was the last main line built in New Jersey. The line was considered an engineering marvel—a "super-railroad", in the vernacular of the day—with deep cuts, tall fills, and two large viaducts that allowed a mostly straight route through the mountains of the state's northwest region. Although the DL&W was profitable during its corporate life, competition from trucks and other economic pressures after World War II forced it to merge with competitor Erie Railroad, forming the Erie Lackawanna Railroad (EL) in 1960.
The EL initially shifted most freight traffic away from the Cut-Off, though it continued to run passenger trains over the line. The railroad's flagship passenger train, the Phoebe Snow, traveled via the Cut-Off until it was discontinued in November 1966, and the last regularly scheduled passenger train, the Lake Cities, ran over the line on January 5–6, 1970. After May 8, 1974, freight traffic was revived on the line after the closure of a key junction with the Penn Central in Maybrook, New York, caused by fire damage to the ex-New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Poughkeepsie Bridge. The conveyance of EL into Conrail on April 1, 1976, gave Conrail excess east–west trackage, however, and service on the Cut-Off ended in January 1979. (Conrail officials later said they might not have abandoned the Scranton Route, including the Cut-Off, if the EL had not severed a section of the Boonton Branch near Paterson, New Jersey, in the early 1960s for the construction of Interstate 80.)
Early preservation efforts (1979–86) Efforts to preserve the Cut-Off began almost immediately upon the route's closing. In November 1979, Amtrak operated an inspection train between Hoboken and Scranton to investigate intercity rail service between the two cities. Dubbed the "Pocono Mountain Special", the train left Hoboken and ran west on the Morristown Line on November 13, 1979, reaching Port Morris shortly after 9 a.m. With the main line severed at Port Morris Junction, the special train detoured through Port Morris Yard, ran over Port Morris Wye, and then rolled onto the Cut-Off. The train ran to Scranton, where it was met by a group of political dignitaries. It was the last passenger train in the twentieth century—and the only Amtrak train—to operate over the entire route. The idea of Hoboken–Scranton service faded as Amtrak faced funding shortfalls and the need for significant track and station repairs in order to run passenger service on the line.
The inspection trip marked the end of one era, and the beginning of another: a 40-plus-year effort to save and then reactivate the Cut-Off. In the beginning, finding an operator for the line was less pressing than preserving the track and right-of-way itself. Several attempts were made to purchase the line from Conrail, which was concerned that a competitor might try to restore freight service on the route. The Sussex County Freeholder Board in New Jersey pursued such a purchase.
The Monroe County Railroad Authority in Pennsylvania was also involved, and nearly reached a deal to buy the section of track between Port Morris and Scranton for $6.5 million. The railroad authority would have borrowed $4.1 million from the federal government at 3.25 percent per annum and issued bonds to cover the rest of the purchase price plus additional unspecified costs to restore the line. The deal would have allowed Conrail to remove about of track with an option for Pennsylvania, through the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), to purchase the second track to Moscow, Pennsylvania, for operations out of Scranton's Steamtown National Historic Site. The agreement stipulated that the railroad operator would repay the loan from operational revenue.
In spite of initial optimism, the deal began to fall apart, and on August 10, 1983, the U.S. Department of Transportation informed Monroe County officials that the federal loan guarantee had been revoked and would instead go to the financially ailing Detroit & Mackinac Railway in Michigan. Monroe County officials continued to press their case, hoping that Congress would provide financial support; the railroad authority invited 16 potential operators to submit proposals, and seven did so on August 26, 1983. Meanwhile, the federal regulations surrounding the abandonment of railroad lines changed; instead of a lengthy regulatory process that had discouraged railroads from abandoning unwanted routes, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) would be allowed to approve the abandonment of any track if it were not in service and had no originating or terminating shipments for two years, and was not required to serve any other track. This allowed Conrail to abandon the Cut-Off almost immediately. Atlantic City gambling interests also opposed restoring rail service over the Cut-Off, fearing renewed passenger service would provide a "Gambler's Express" to not-as-yet-built casinos in the Poconos that might compete with the nascent casinos of the Jersey Shore. A New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) priority list of rail projects at the time listed the Cut-Off as Number 26 in a list of unfunded capital projects.
The Monroe County Railroad Authority continued to fight Conrail, with support from PennDOT and the threat of the use of a privately owned World War II tank to block any Conrail rail-removal train. Conrail eventually relented and agreed not to sever the line between Slateford and Scranton.
Track removal
With all regulatory and political hurdles removed in New Jersey, however, Conrail began lifting track on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River Viaduct on June 8, 1984. Even as this was taking place, Morris County Transportation Department director Frank Reilly made last-ditch attempts to delay track removal in New Jersey. In addition, the dismantling was hampered to a minor degree by people who replaced railroad spikes removed by the crew. Also, members of the Conrail track-removal crew later admitted to "dragging their feet" in the hopes that a delay in the track removal might result in the saving of the line. These efforts proved to be in vain, however, as the last mainline trackage would be removed from the Cut-Off at Port Morris on October 5, 1984.The Block Line, Tri-State Rail of that year. Conrail reported that the 39-foot (12 m) sections of 131 lb (55 kg/m) stick rail that was removed was to be welded together to be relaid elsewhere in the Conrail system. [Tri-State Railway Historical Society, Inc., Fall 1984, p.22.] Wooden ties and rock ballast were left in place, which was unusual since Conrail's standard abandonment practice involved removing all components (rails, wooden ties, signals, poles, rock ballast) when dismantling a railroad.
With track removal complete, the of right-of-way west of County Road 602 (Brooklyn-Stanhope Road) in Hopatcong, New Jersey, was sold to Jerry Turco, a developer based in Kearny, New Jersey. Turco said that he originally had no intention of purchasing the Cut-Off, but rather had learned of its availability from Conrail after he inquired about a section of the Lehigh & Hudson River Railway (L&HR) in Andover, an abandoned line that Conrail also owned. Turco said he wanted to acquire the short section so that he could expand a nursing home operation that abutted the roadbed. Conrail refused to sell the isolated Andover parcel, but later offered to sell it if Turco would acquire all of the L&HR right-of-way from Sparta to Belvidere, a total of . Turco said that it was during this time that Conrail offered the Cut-Off, which crosses the L&HR on the Pequest Fill near Tranquility, New Jersey, to create a package deal.
Turco eventually accepted the deal to purchase both abandoned rail lines, acquiring nearly of right-of-way for roughly $2 million. Shortly thereafter, Conrail sold the remaining parcel east of Sussex County Road 602 to developer Burton Goldmeier of Hopatcong, who reportedly wanted to use that section of the Cut-Off as an access road to a proposed housing development. (Conrail would remove the tracks from the L&HR in 1988.)
Later preservation and restoration efforts (1986–2008)
The removal of the rails and the sale of the right-of-way to private developers made restoration of the Cut-Off more challenging. Then they got worse when Turco announced plans, at the time of his acquisition of the right-of-way, to remove fill material from the Pequest Fill and other large Cut-Off fills for the Westway Project in New York City and to dump garbage and construction materials into the large cuts.The Lackawanna Cut-Off Right-of-Way Use and Extension Study, Gannett Fleming and Kaiser Engineers, Corp., September 1989. The Westway Project was abandoned in September 1985, but there were other projects that Turco could have supplied fill material to, but as time went on Turco apparently saw greater opportunity elsewhere. As such, it was never entirely clear how serious Turco was about his proposed Rebar Landfill or if this was simply a ploy to stir up public opposition and force the New Jersey state government to step in and acquire the Cut-Off by condemnation. In any case, the proposal helped galvanize support for preserving the Cut-Off.
In November 1989, New Jersey citizens voted on a $25 million state bond issue for acquiring abandoned railroad rights-of-way. After they approved it overwhelmingly, NJDOT instituted eminent domain proceedings against the corporations that Turco and Goldmeier had established in New Jersey for the Cut-Off.
For liability purposes, Turco had established separate corporations for the parcels of right-of-way in each municipality that his section of the Cut-Off ran through: Knowlton, Blairstown and Frelinghuysen townships in Warren County; Green, Byram, Andover and Stanhope townships and Andover borough in Sussex County. In addition, separate corporations had been set up for the Paulinskill Viaduct and the Delaware River Viaduct, as well as for the of right-of-way in Pennsylvania, which was later acquired by Pennsylvania's Monroe County Railroad Authority. In addition to these corporations, Turco created holding companies to oversee these other corporations: Sussex & Warren Holding Company, Inc. and OLC, Inc., (OLC, Old Lackawanna Cut-Off). On the other hand, Goldmeier's section of right-of-way, which passed through short sections of Roxbury Township (Port Morris and Landing) in Morris County and Hopatcong Borough and Byram Township in Sussex County, was held as one parcel.
By 2001, New Jersey and Pennsylvania had acquired their respective portions of the Cut-Off for a total of $21 million.